I did say there was an official statement that wasn’t in the suggestion forums that ships with confirmed parts built for them, in example: H39’s 40.6cms - if H39 had not been laid down - would give it the possibility of being added.
This literally puts Big Monty in the possibility of being added, solely because of the secondaries alone.
Again, the major factor here is not designed for, it is build for.
Do you have proof any 5"/54 guns were actually build for Montana? Because I posted earlier, as far as I could find, they were only put into production in 1945, almost 2 years after the Montana’s were cancelled.
This doesn’t really matter since the 16"/50s are not unique. They were fitted to the Iowa’s and are thus not something special to the Montana class, unlike those 51cm guns for the A-150, which were unique to that class of ship.
The 51cms technically weren’t built just for the A150 class. The A140s were designed in such a way that they could be upgunned to the 51cm turrets with minimal work needed.
The A150 was simply designed with 51cms as its primary caliber
Now whether or not the IJN had plans to upgun the A140s to 51cm twin turrets, I can’t say as I haven’t found any documentation saying as such.
If what was discussed in the thread I linked is verifiably true, that means the 12.7cm/54 DPs were designed and built with the Montanas as the recipients.
Someone in another thread they had pictures of Montana’s powerplant but that one I’m not so sure if that’s actually true.
Like I said, can you provide proof?
The other thread also does not do as such. And so they can claim that those guns were built for Montana all they want, but without proof that claim is just empty air.
I personally cannot.
Primarily because my scope of knowledge is mainly IJN and Germany. Specifically Bismarck and projects A140 and A150.
Edit
For clarification; I lack any saved documentation about Montana.
They are unique if they were built for Montana’s original contract.
The USN does not buy stockpiles of complete naval rifles, they buy replacement barrels and thats it.
The breach of a Mark 7 does not have a maximum service life, they are built for each ship they are to be mounted on, this is one of the reasons why, when Iowa had her turret explosion in 1989, she was possibly on the docket for never using that turret ever again, as its nearly impossible to fit a fresh breach into said turrets.
Barrels by comparison can be easily detached from the Mark 7.
There was no guns built for the A-150s, only the barrels / tubes, the replaceable, standardized component of the rifle, no breaches were ever found made for them and no records exist of such.
Nope, there was multiple other schemes that were to mount the 51cm gun, and if we are going by your metric, the fact that other schemes exist and could mount the guns now omits all of them from being added as they could all use the gun / gun tubes.
EG the Scheme A A-150 that sports an additional turret
Or the famed 100000 ton version that sported 12 51cm guns.
